Archive for the ‘Food Politics’ Category

I am not a vegetarian and I have no problems with hunting free animals. However I do disagree with how meat animals are raised. And more importantly, I care about others on the planet having enough to eat. That is why I prefer that meat (when I use it) be used as a condiment or flavoring, and not served in huge chunks. I also believe in giving thanks to the spirit of the animal whenever using meat. Anyway, this embedded video explains and simplifies how your and my choices of foods and ingredients affect malnourished people in other parts of the globe. It’s very well done, about nine minutes long. Enjoy!

350 made of veggies at Coburg Civic Centre, in the township of Moreland (the near north suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.) The white leaves are cabbage. It is a shame there were no rooftops to climb on to get a good angle on it and alas, Melbourne is flat and this district is pretty urban, so no green hillsides either. I gave a little schpiel on plarn at this do. (Search blog for plarn if you don’t know what that is.) Beyond Zero Emissions gave a very nice schpiel. Australia is a huge exporter of coal so there are a large number of anti-greens because they think of all the $$$ they will lose in the short run. But think about it! Australia uses only a tiny percentage of its own coal. It’s not about them, it’s about their CUSTOMERS! Many of their biggest coal customers are making great strides to reduce THEIR carbon, ergo use other fuels and reduce their coal. Australia would do better to anticipate this and come up with some alternate plan.

This post is for everybody, but especially my Foodbuzz friends. Please read it to the end.

Today I am totally blown away! Here I am this little unknown food blogger ranting on to mostly myself and a few local friends so I can glom the recipes into a nice PDF to give to friends for Christmas and suddenly this person called Adina Genn leaves a comment on my pozole recipe and says she wants to phone interview me about it and and its attendant mole recipe on behalf of the legendery Molly O’Neill.Read the rest of this entry »

Plastic bags are not our friends! In September 2008 I blogged a snip from the Running the Numbers art exhibit that imparts a strange, static but eerily alien beauty to the pattern of millions of crinkly plastic bags, while being scary to the thinking person. For those of you who are more visceral, here is the gross aftermath of these bags being used all over the world for a couple decades.
Perhaps you’ve heard talk about the huge plastic bag island in a gyre in the middle of the Pacific away from all the major trade routes. There is a series of 12 videos about a crew of young people and scientists who set out to find it and document it. I’ve embedded the climactic and most frightening of the 12 episodes. (Warning: Colorful language)

I am pleased to note that country after country is jumping on the bandwagon to ban these revolting things in favor of reusables. Ireland banned them nearly a decade ago and businesses did not crash and burn because of it. When will the USA do the smart thing?